Fire and gasoline – a great metaphor for the relationship between digital content and social media. Over the past few years, an increasing number of organizations have incorporated content marketing tactics into their overall marketing strategies. The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) defines content marketing as a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. According to their 2015 report, 77% of organizations reported using content marketing over the past year. But content marketing is not new. Brands have long used storytelling as a marketing tactic. This video from CMI provides a brief history of content marketing as we know it today.

Social media has changed the way marketers speak to consumers and content that is intended to educate and engage is now a driving force in marketing strategies. Traditional marketing pushed people into the brand experience – content marketing pulls them in through engaging their interest with great content.

No where is the power of awesome content better illustrated than through the emergence of a new industry of online businesses operated solely out of niche special interest blogs. There is a special interest blog for just about every topic. Fashion, food, health and wellness, and even the art of blogging are all heavily represented in the blogging space.

Most blogs generate content on a very narrow subject range. For example, a food blog would be about a specific type of food or style of cooking. However, there are some excellent case studies emerging to indicate that creating content that is just outside of your niche may actually help your blog grow.

A great example of this is the fitness blog Nerd Fitness. Authored by Steve Kamb, the blog provides strategies for living a healthy lifestyle with a “nerd culture” twist (think Star Trek and super heros). Steve’s content is informative, fun and always ties back into his blogs mission of helping his readers “Level up your life, every single day.” In this audio clip from an interview with Maneesh Sethi of Hack the System, Steve explains how his blog got started and what he did to make it successful.

In 2010, Steve took a risk and “leveled up” his blog by posting and article not 100% related to fitness. He created a post chronicling his 14 months adventure around the world. Steve recalls making the decision, “With my site being a fitness website and having very little to do with travel, it wasn’t exactly in the list of generally discussed topics. However, my site deals with a lot of aspects of my life along with fitness tips, and I figured people might be interested in reading about the big adventure I had coming up.” His followers were interested and so were many others. How to Travel Around the World for $418 was quickly picked up by sites like HakerNews and Gizmodo.

After the pick up on Gizmodo, traffic to the site increased dramatically – mostly from referrals sources.

But the benefits of the pickup were not just increased web traffic. Steve gained 500-700 subscribers over the next 2 days. That’s about 1% of the total new visitors. Steve also saw an increase of over 300 twitter followers. An impressive return.

Steve’s blog post was picked up and republished on other sites because it was quality content. The blog post is informative and entertaining and, importantly, has connections back to his original blog purpose of providing health and fitness information. He explains the achievement and highlights the importance of quality “My article made it onto Gizmodo because I consistently wrote great content for two years and this one happened to be the one that caught their attention. I didn’t solicit anybody, I didn’t call in any favors, I didn’t (and still haven’t) spent a dollar on advertising – I wrote something worth sharing.”

And that really is the key to a successful content strategy for any business. Create something valuable that engages and informs your audience.

So you want to start blogging? – Lessons for others

Find your space. Even if your idea is represented elsewhere online, find something unique about your brand and target your content towards not only your product and service, but content that will interest those in your target market.

Focus on quality over quantity. You need to create content that is interesting to your audience. One good blog a week is better than 5 mediocre ones.

Use social media. Publicize your blog on your own channels but also engage others your think might be interested in your content.

Utilize metrics. Study the analytics from your website and social media platforms to help you determine what content is driving sales, what content is driving engagement and what is falling flat.

Submitted By: Tabatha Laverty

To contact the author of this entry please email at: tabatha.laverty@gmail.com
If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Programme Director, Social Media for Business Performance.